Activity Alignment (Early Access)

Overview

Activity Alignment is currently available in Early Access for select customers. Email us to join the waitlist.

Your employees might be working, but how much time are they spending on the work that achieves results? Activity Alignment measures time spent on high-value activities rather than the sheer number of hours worked, empowering managers to provide concrete coaching guidance that results in more valuable, impactful work.

Early Access participants can access Activity Alignment by navigating to Insights > Activity Alignment in the left-hand app navigation.

Read on to understand the key terms and concepts associated with Activity Alignment, and learn how to leverage the data to improve employee performance.

• Key Terms
• Configuration
• Team Tab
• Users Tab
• Details Tab (requires Advanced Activity Details or the Screen Details Add-on)

Key Terms

Activity Alignment introduces a new performance management framework and metrics to measure time spent on high-value activities. It’s important to understand the following terms before using the feature.

Configuration

For best practices and a step-by-step walkthrough, see our Activity Alignment Configuration Guide.

To view a team’s data in Activity Alignment, you must first configure Core Categories for the team and define a Core Activity Goal — the percentage of productive time that team members should spend on core activities.

Note: As noted in the Activity Alignment Configuration Guide, it is recommended that managers complete the configuration process for their direct reports, as they generally have the best understanding of where team members should spend their time.

After navigating to Activity Alignment (Insights > Activity Alignment), click the Configuration tab at the top of the screen, then click the Add configuration button to launch the configuration wizard. Follow the step-by-step configuration instructions to either use a predefined template or add categories manually.

Note: If Core Categories have not yet been configured for any of your Viewable Groups, you will automatically land on the Configuration page and be prompted to complete the process.

Once a team has been configured, you can edit Core Categories and the Core Activity Goal from the Configuration page. Find the team in the list, then click the 3-dot icon on the right-hand side of the appropriate row and select “Edit.”

The Activity Alignment dashboards will immediately reflect any changes made (data will be updated retroactively).

Team Tab

Assess activity alignment at the team level. See how many team members are achieving their Core Activity Goal and Productivity Goal, gauge performance trends and identify employees missing their goals. (See Key Terms for definitions of each Performance Assessment category.)

Select one or more teams from the Team filter to view their data in the dashboard. Only teams that have been configured in Activity Alignment will appear in the Team drop-down filter.

The ‘Team Overview’ section of the Activity Alignment - Team tab

Review the Performance Assessment by Week chart to see whether team performance is improving or declining. This helps managers and leaders assess the impact of coaching conversations and determine if additional guidance is needed.

The ‘Users with Performance Opportunities’ section of the Activity Alignment - Team tab

The Users with Performance Opportunities section provides an at-a-glance view of team members who are not achieving their Productivity Goal and/or Core Activity Goal, enabling managers to assess where their attention is needed and prioritize accordingly. Click a user’s name to drill into their activity in the Users tab.

Users Tab

In the Users tab, managers and leaders can see each team member’s Performance Assessment along with the underlying data. With one click, access actionable guidance to drive performance coaching conversations tailored to each employee’s opportunities for improvement.

Select one or more teams from the Team filter to view their data in the dashboard. Only teams that have been configured in Activity Alignment will appear in the Team drop-down filter.

The ‘Coaching Guidance by Team Member’ table on the Activity Alignment - Users tab

The Coaching Guidance by Team Member table displays the following data for each user:

• Primary Team (see Key Terms for more information)
• Productive Hours/Day vs Goal
• Core Activity Hours/Day vs Goal
  • Core Activity Goal is determined during the configuration process for each team. It is defined as a percentage of the team’s Productive Hours/Day Goal (70% by default). In the Coaching Guidance by Team Member table, the goal is translated to the appropriate number of hours.
    • Ex. If a team’s Productive Hours/Day Goal = 7, and Core Activity Goal = 70%, the Core Activity Goal = 4.9 hours.
• Core Activity Efficiency
  • This is the percent of a user’s actual Productive Hours/Day spent on Core Activities. It is different from the Core Activity Goal, which is based on a user’s Productive Hours/Day Goal.
  • Core Activity Efficiency indicates how efficiently each employee uses their work time. A high percentage indicates that an employee spends the majority of their time on Core Activities. If a user is achieving their Core Activity Goal, but Core Activity Efficiency is low (below ~60%), the employee is likely only hitting their goal by virtue of working long hours.
• Performance Assessment
  • This assessment is based on the user’s performance against their Productive Hours/Day Goal and against their Core Activity Goal. See Key Terms for definitions of each Performance Assessment category.
  • Click a user’s Performance Assessment to immediately access relevant coaching guidance in ActivTrak Academy. These 5-10-minute microcourses equip managers to provide specific, actionable guidance to team members about the activities they should maximize and minimize to operate more efficiently and improve performance.

The ‘User Activity Summary’ on the Activity Alignment - Users tab

Select a user from the User filter at the top of the dashboard to view their data in the User Activity Summary:

• Category Breakdown
  • See which categories (Core and Non-Core) the user spends the most time in, and how much of their productive time each accounts for.
• Activities to Maximize and Activities to Minimize
  • This section is a drill-down from Category Breakdown, showing the specific apps and websites that consume the majority of a user’s time divided into Core and Non-Core Categories.
  • Managers should reference this data ahead of performance coaching conversations to provide specific guidance to team members about how to better utilize their time.
• Core vs Non-Core Activities by Hour of Day
  • Get an hourly breakdown of a user’s day to see when they tend to spend more and less time on Core Activities.
  • Share this data with employees in performance conversations to help them recognize patterns in their work habits and become more cognizant of avoiding distractions at certain times of day.
  • Reviewing this data for top performers can help tease out effective work habits that may be replicable across the team. For example, carving out time in the morning and afternoon to respond to internal messages via Microsoft Teams, while minimizing those activities throughout the rest of the day.

Details Tab

Available in accounts with Advanced Activity Details or the Screen Details Add-on

The Details tab enables managers and leaders to drill one step further into employee activity, providing visibility into the title bars of websites and applications used by each team member. This provides more granular visibility into what employees are working on, and can be used to quantify things like time spent on a specific project or a particular step in a process.

To view a team member's data in the Details tab:

• Drill into a specific app or website from the Activities to Maximize or Activities to Minimize section of the Users tab, OR
• Select a user from the User filter in the Details tab

The Activity Alignment - Details tab

The Details tab can be used in multiple ways by adjusting the filter selections:

• App or Site Filter: Enter an app or site (or drill down from the Users tab) to understand which specific pages or documents a user spends time on. This provides additional context about what employees are working on, and can unearth time-consuming steps in a process or other discrepancies in how employees work.
  • For example, Salesforce may be a Core Activity for Account Executives on a Sales team. But there are several activities that take place within Salesforce — adding notes to an opportunity, researching an account, following up on leads from a recent event. The Details tab can tell managers more about how employees are using these tools.
• Title Bar Filter: Enter keywords to view all related user activity across apps and websites. This enables managers to quantify time spent on a specific project or on work associated with a specific customer. Note: Use the ‘contains’ operator (rather than ‘equals’) to avoid limiting your search. This field is case sensitive.
  • For example, if an Account Executive has been working on a major expansion opportunity with a customer, entering the customer’s name would surface the Salesforce opportunity record, slide decks to present to the buying committee, and Zoom calls with the customer, along with the time spent on each of those activities within the selected time period.

Learn more:

• Activity Alignment Configuration Guide
• Insights Overview
• Contact Support